Sometimes the fragments make more sense than the line. BLUE, the first collaboration of SOUL (Saunders/Outlaw/Udoh/Lyons), is a genre-bending new work of devised performance re-embodying queer legacies of blues music through music, storytelling and improvisation. We will look to buried blues heroes of the past—including queer and queer-presumed pioneers like Elvie “L.V.” Thomas (1891-1979) and Geechie Wiley (1908-1950), Tony Jackson (1882-1921), Bessie Smith (1892-1937), and Billy Wright (1932-1991)—as we fashion a new blues for the 21st century in real time.
Where is our anguish, where are our desires and pleasures that threaten and repulse, where is the joy that somehow grows in inverse proportion to frustration and fear? By inhabiting and breaking the form of the blues, this work will locate collective feeling in twelve bars and beyond. It’s a song of survival. A song for those whose stories can’t be finished.
Currently in development, Blue takes the form of a blues concert and will combine the direct testimony of the artists’ lives (in the form of concert “patter”) and the fictional narratives that bloom from them in the form of experimental, cross-genre songs. Songs that begin with deep blues twist out of the blues tradition to take on new forms that reflect what the queer ghosts of the hidden blues past have become in a new queer millennium. Unnameable identities that found form in the blues become, in this piece, what no one could have imagined.
Participant Bios
Dudley Saunders is a writer, composer and performance artist who has created five stage works, including DEATH BLUES (Best Musical, NEW YORK PRESS) and BIRDBONES. A three-time Emmy nominee and winner for the documentary CITY RISING, his recordings have earned GLAMA, OutMusic, and Mountain Stage awards. Dudley has written for ROLLING STONE and THE VILLAGE VOICE, and has received fellowships from Yaddo and the Albee Foundation, alongside grants from the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation. His prominent artistic collaborations include projects with John Kelly and Sarah Schulman at Performance Space New York, and Heather Woodbury. Learn more at dudleysaunders.com.
Paul Outlaw is a Los Angeles and Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the physical and psychological legacies of white supremacist, patriarchal violence in Euro-American history. Leaving the fractured society of Reagan-era America, Paul spent a decade in Cold War Berlin, where he fronted post-punk bands like Die Haut and starred in the Oscar-winning short SCHWARZFAHRER (1993). He has created solo and collaborative performances since the 1990s, including BBC (BIG BLACK COCKROACH), which premiered at REDCAT in 2024. His work has been presented at LACMA, MOCA, and Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater, earning grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and others. Learn more at outlawplay.com.
Sharon Udoh is a Nigerian-American pianist, composer and 2026 United States Artist Fellow. Initially trained in the Pentecostal church, she later held a residency at Columbus’s Wexner Center for the Arts. There, she joined Lars Jan’s production of THE WHITE ALBUM, which led to her collaborating and performing with the experimental rap group clipping. since 2019. Moving to Chicago in 2022, Sharon immersed herself in its experimental music scene. Her current projects include THE BLACK SOAPS (an episodic opera with Marvin Tate), the sextet Potluck, the improvised duo Potliquor with Allen Moore, and her solo American-African Hymnal project exploring U.S. hymn literature. Learn more at sharonudoh.com.
Sara Lyons is a bicoastal director creating interdisciplinary theatre that explodes form and politics. Working across adaptation, social practice and new media, their work has been presented by REDCAT, The Kitchen and the Edinburgh Fringe. Sara has received residencies at CAP UCLA and the Santa Fe Art Institute. Current projects include THIS EMANCIPATION THING at REDCAT and BBC (BIG BLACK COCKROACH) with Paul Outlaw. An alum of NYU’s EMERGENYC and holder of an MFA from Carnegie Mellon, Sara has taught at UCLA and Sarah Lawrence, and currently teaches directing at Skidmore College. Learn more at sara-lyons.com.
Blue is organized by Paul Outlaw, Sara Lyons, Dudley Saunders, and Sharon Udoh as part of the 2026 Circa: Queer Histories Festival, presented by One Institute.
This is a transformative multi-purpose space redefining the traditional "Junior High" experience of our adolescence. Our mission is to facilitate arts expression and arts education for all people of all ages and all socioeconomic status. Our programming is curated with a core ethos to encourage radical empathy intended to attract a compassionate community of artists. Basically, everything you wished your growing up experience was, and more.